PuzzleMaker — Image viewer & tile composer

Small Tkinter + Pillow utility to:

• open an image (processing is done on the full-resolution copy; GUI shows a scaled preview),
• overlay an NxM grid,
• expand each cell by a percentage "border" that overlaps neighbours,
• extract each expanded cell as a tile and compose a single output puzzle_full.jpg, plus an A4 puzzle_page_x-y.jpg (both A4 320ppi) to print every puzzle part, and puzzle_contours_x-y.svg with SVG contours for using with the laser engraver

Requirements

• Tested with Python 3.11 on Windows and Mac
• Pillow
• tkinter (usually included with Python)
• project module pathcreator.py (included in the repo)

Installation

1. Install dependencies:

   python -m pip install --upgrade pip
   python -m pip install pillow

Run

• From the project folder:

  python main.py

Usage

1. Click "Open Image..." and choose an image file.

2. Set:

   • Rows (N)
   • Columns (M)
   • Border (%) — percent expansion per cell (e.g. 20 → each cell grows by 20%).
   • Tab (%) — percent dimension for the tabs referred to the border size (max 100%!)
   • Padding (pixel): number of pixel for padding around the A4 images

3. Click "Update" to redraw the overlay preview.

4. The app saves all the files (see details below).

Where output files are saved

• When running as a script: the app attempts to save next to main.py.
• When frozen with PyInstaller: primary save location is the executable folder. If that location is not writable (e.g. Program Files), the app falls back to the user's Pictures folder (or home folder if Pictures can't be created).
• You can change the save location in main.py if you prefer a specific path.

Preview vs processing

• The UI shows a scaled preview for performance, but all processing (grid, masks, extraction) runs on the full-resolution image to preserve quality.

Packaging with PyInstaller (Windows and Mac)

• Recommended command (run from project folder): read the Pyinstaller instruction.txt

Notes

• The final puzzle will mantain the original image's dimensions
• Large full-resolution images may require significant memory/time to process.
• The code already detects PyInstaller "frozen" mode to choose a save directory; modify that logic if you prefer a different fallback.
• If you want the app to prompt for an output path instead of automatic saving, add a Save As dialog in main.py.

License

• Personal project. Add a license file if you intend to redistribute.